It’s not been such a hot holiday for the dogs this time around. We’ve carted them around in the back of the car, leaving them on their own while we visit agents and today get to go inside a couple of houses. Don’t think though that they’ve had a terrible time. They’ve had plenty of pub lunches (Archie has a scratched nose tonight for trying to eat the cat in the pub in Duloe today), including pork scratchings and plenty of fuss from other customers. They’ve also been in the sea every day and tonight Archie lays fast asleep on the sofa still with sand in his toes!

We’ve viewed two houses today. The first the one in Polperro. Nice but needing a lot of work and a long walk out of the village which is both a blessing and a curse….plenty of places to park but a long walk from the harbour and pubs. The only problem really though is it isn’t what we want. It was built in the 1950s (so possibly a Mundic property) and this also means little or no character.

After seeing this place we meet up with Alan and Dee for lunch to share our experiences and hear their thoughts. How lucky we are to have friends we trust in the vicinity. Alan explains the Mundic problem, we chew over the merits of the Polperro property and speculate on the two viewings set up for this afternoon.

Dashing over to Callington we arrive just in time for our appointment to find no-one home in the house we tried to look at on Saturday. I am cross. We have travelled a long way twice now to look at this house and the owner seems oblivious to our efforts. Does he want to sell this house? Who knows. I walk round the corner to the estate agent acting on his behalf and vent some of my fury on them. I find their attitude incomprehensible. They are marketing the property and incurring costs to do so, yet they simply shrug their shoulders and say ‘well, he has lost a viewing then’. I am furious and tell them that as his agents I thought they might work a bit harder to ensure a viewing could be done.

This leaves us with only a few minutes to get to our last appointment of the day, high up on the moor at the cottage we’d seen on Saturday.

The view from the road is indescribable – breathtaking Cornish countryside, cattle, sheep among green fields hemmed in by dry stone walls. The country rolls down and the sea glints in the distance. The best view I think I have ever seen.

The house is nearly 200 years old and clearly needs a huge amount of tlc. Before entering we can see it is in desperate need of a new roof, the front of the cottage has been spoiled by a horrible lean-to porch that serves no apparent purpose and the door is rotten with no lock on it.

Inside there is a fire burning in the stone fireplace and the downstairs is a single room with kitchen, dining room and sitting room all in one. It is so charming I feel at home immediately. The walls are two feet thick and built from stone. There are sash windows and some stained glass that must be a hundred years old around the door. I think I may have found my spiritual home in these four walls.

Upstairs there are two bedrooms, one at the front of the house with ‘that view’ and one overlooking the garden. There is a tiny bathroom and a narrow, rickety staircase.

We go into the garden. This is no mean feat in itself. There is a ten feet high stone wall outside the back door and at the top of this wall is a hundred foot long ‘field’. The access to the garden is via stone steps up in the next-door neighbour’s garden. We go up for a look. The garden is so high it is on a level with the bedrooms of the house. Its inhabitants are sheep! There are sheep droppings and wool everywhere. It is clearly an unloved garden. I can make this my own, I know I can.

After we leave, I hold my breath as I ask David what he thinks. He tells me the location is wonderful and the house could be fantastic but the amount of work it needs scares him. I am devastated. We both have to want this and it’s clear I want it more than him.

I hatch a cunning plan and suggest that we arrange another viewing and ask Alan to have a look and tell us how much work we’d need to do and how much he thinks we’d need to spend to make it nice. David agrees and we put the plan into action. Tomorrow we go back for another look.